Impact of Event Scale-6 (IES-6) for U.S. adults who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic

Background COVID-19 pandemic causes psychological problems such as stress. It is important to accurately identify the level of stress and establish effective intervention. The Impact of Event Scale-6 (IES-6) is widely used for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screening by measuring the level of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:BMC psychiatry 2022-07, Vol.22 (1), p.1-490, Article 490
Main Authors: Jeong, Jiin, Kim, Ah-Ram, Hilton, Claudia, Hong, Ickpyo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Anxiety
Coronavirus
Coronaviruses
COVID-19
Demographic aspects
Diagnosis
Disease transmission
Epidemics
Impact of event scale-6
Mental depression
Mental disorders
Mental health
Pandemics
Post traumatic stress disorder
Principal components analysis
Psychiatry
Psychological aspects
Psychometrics
Quality of life
Questionnaires
Rasch analysis
Rasch model
Risk factors
Social distancing
Suicides & suicide attempts
United States
Validation studies
Validity
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Summary:Background COVID-19 pandemic causes psychological problems such as stress. It is important to accurately identify the level of stress and establish effective intervention. The Impact of Event Scale-6 (IES-6) is widely used for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) screening by measuring the level of subjective stress, but there has been no research on its psychometric properties with individuals who experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods A random sample of 600 participants were randomly selected from a COVID-19 survey database (n = 6391). Rasch analysis was conducted to examine item fit, rating scale structure, construct validity, differential item functioning (DIF), and precision of the IES-6. Results The principal component analysis of Rasch residuals (54.1% of the raw variance explained) and the average of residual correlations (average r = .19) supported the unidimensionality structure in the IES-6. The rating scale was suitable, and the item difficulty hierarchy was logical. The item fit and the DIF contrast were acceptable, except for item 5. The IES-6's person reliability was .76, which was also an acceptable level. Conclusions This study showed that the IES-6 has acceptable item-level psychometrics for screening the stress level in adults in the United States for individuals who have experienced the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings suggested that the IES-6 would be useful for the rapid identification of the high-level stressand allow clinicians to quickly provide interventions for people with the COVID-19 related stress and their families. Keywords: COVID-19, Coronavirus, Impact of event scale-6, Post-traumatic stress disorder, Rasch analysis, Psychometrics
ISSN:1471-244X
1471-244X
DOI:10.1186/s12888-022-04136-2